Designing an interactive exhibitor for assisting blind and visually impaired visitors in tactile exploration of original museum pieces

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ScienceDirect

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Procedia Computer Science 138 (2018) 561–570

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CENTERIS - International Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems / ProjMAN - International Conference on Project MANagement / HCist - International Conference on Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies.

10.1016/j.procs.2018.10.076

1877-0509

ScienceDirect

www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

CENTERIS - International Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems/ProjMAN -

International Conference on Project MANagement/HCist - International

Conference on Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies,

CENTERIS/ProjMAN/HCist 2018

Designing an Interactive Exhibitor for Assisting Blind and Visually

Impaired Visitors in Tactile Exploration of Original Museum Pieces

Roberto Vaz

a

_{, Paula Odete Fernandes}

b,

_{*, Ana Cecília Rocha Veiga}

c

a_{University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto 4200 465, Portugal} b_{Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Campus Sta. Apolónia, Bragança 5300 253, Portugal}

Applied Management Research Unit (UNIAG) - Portugal

c_{Federal University of Minas Gerais, Av. Pres. Antônio Carlos, Belo Horizonte 31270 901, Brazil}

Abstract

Blind and visually impaired visitors experience a lot of constraints when visiting museums exhibitions, giving the ocular centricity of these institutions, the lack of cognitive, physical and sensorial access to exhibits or replicas, increased by the inaccessibility to use the digital media technologies designed to provide different experiences, among other constraints.

This paper aims to present the design and implementation of an exhibitor to communicate original museum samples to blind and visually impaired patrons, without the need to be replicated, that interactively "tell stories about their lives" whenever picked up. Tests performed with 13 partially sighted and blind participants at the main exhibition museum space, demonstrated very positive evaluations regarding pragmatic and hedonic qualities of the interaction, a positive capacity to mentally conceptualize the exhibits according to the audio descriptions, and how to enhance the experience of using more exhibitors like this one during a future visit to the museum.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CENTERIS - International Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems / ProjMAN - International Conference on Project MANagement / HCist - International Conference on Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +351 273303103; fax: +351 273313050. E-mail address: pof@ipb.pt

ScienceDirect

www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

CENTERIS - International Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems/ProjMAN -

International Conference on Project MANagement/HCist - International

Conference on Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies,

CENTERIS/ProjMAN/HCist 2018

Designing an Interactive Exhibitor for Assisting Blind and Visually

Impaired Visitors in Tactile Exploration of Original Museum Pieces

Roberto Vaz

a

_{, Paula Odete Fernandes}

b,

_{*, Ana Cecília Rocha Veiga}

c

a_{University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto 4200 465, Portugal} b_{Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Campus Sta. Apolónia, Bragança 5300 253, Portugal}

Applied Management Research Unit (UNIAG) - Portugal

c_{Federal University of Minas Gerais, Av. Pres. Antônio Carlos, Belo Horizonte 31270 901, Brazil}

Abstract

Blind and visually impaired visitors experience a lot of constraints when visiting museums exhibitions, giving the ocular centricity of these institutions, the lack of cognitive, physical and sensorial access to exhibits or replicas, increased by the inaccessibility to use the digital media technologies designed to provide different experiences, among other constraints.

This paper aims to present the design and implementation of an exhibitor to communicate original museum samples to blind and visually impaired patrons, without the need to be replicated, that interactively "tell stories about their lives" whenever picked up. Tests performed with 13 partially sighted and blind participants at the main exhibition museum space, demonstrated very positive evaluations regarding pragmatic and hedonic qualities of the interaction, a positive capacity to mentally conceptualize the exhibits according to the audio descriptions, and how to enhance the experience of using more exhibitors like this one during a future visit to the museum.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CENTERIS - International Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems / ProjMAN - International Conference on Project MANagement / HCist - International Conference on Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +351 273303103; fax: +351 273313050. E-mail address: pof@ipb.pt

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Keywords: Blind people; Visually impaired people; Museum; Accessibility; Tactile exploration; Visit experience; Human-computer interaction.

1. Introduction

The World Health Organization estimates that 253 million people live with visual impairment [1], of whom about 36 million are blind and around 217 million have moderate to severe vision impairment [2].

In Brazil, where this project was developed, the last Census, in 2010, allowed to estimate that about 6 million (3.2% of the population) have severe vision impairment and 506.377 citizens are totally blind [3].

Given the professional definition of Museum, widely recognized and disseminated by International Council of Museums (ICOM), since 2007, it is clear that museums must provide to all members of society the access to education, offering moments of study and leisure, in order to cooperate for its development, committing itself to safeguard and communicate their collections to the public [4].

In spite of being such privileged environments, visitors with visual disabilities still experience a lot of constraints when visiting these spaces, given that museum exhibitions still being designed to be visually enjoyed [5]–[7]. And this “ocular centricity of museums and galleries ensures that non-visual engagement with art and artefacts remains virtually inconceivable in all but the most innovative of institutions” [8, p. 2].

Additionally, the actual worldwide panorama of interactive technologies present in museums and galleries exhibitions – with the aim to attract visitors’ attention, make them want to go to its places and enhance their experiences while inside or outside them [9] – revealed that the most part of these solutions don’t facilitate neither the cognitive, physical, nor sensorial access for disabled publics [10].

A recent study reported that only 5.5% of blind and visually impaired people visit museums in Europe [11], what corroborates with the conclusion of [12], when stating that research in this field is still scarce, even though [7] argues that the desire to create accessible experiences for this patrons is challenging, especially when dealing with art.

In this sense, some researchers are trying to understand how to enhance the visit to museums for visually impaired patrons: several problems regarding the physical accessibility and a lack of training of the staff to deal with them were identified [6], [13]–[15]. On the other hand, in general, there are not facilities for the orientation and the mobility inside those places [12]–[14], [16]. Regarding the access to museum collections, namely physical and intellectual access to exhibits – which constitutes the main focus of this research – there is a literature consensus about the importance that the sense of touch assumes for somebody with visual disability, as the essence of their access, understanding and construction of mental images of museum artefacts, besides the epic dimension that this can assume in a museum environment [5]–[7], [17], [18].

Although, visitors reveal that they are not always allowed to touch real objects nor sculptures, neither the opportunity for touching replicas is always offered, and when it is possible, the tactile opportunities tend to represent only a very small fraction of the main collection, when compared with all the information available to sighted visitors [13], [19], [20].

Given these points, the present article aims to make a contribution to this field, by presenting the design development process, implementation and users’ pragmatic and hedonic evaluation of an exhibitor that was conceived to provide access to original pieces of the collection of the MM Gerdau - Mines and Metal Museum, and interactively communicate them.

Next section presents the accessible exhibitions technologically mediated for blind and visually impaired visitors in museums. Section 3 presents the interface development process and implementation. The Pedras Sabidas exhibitor evaluation and data analysis will be presented in section 4. Finally, section 5 presents the conclusions and future work. 2. Accessible exhibitions technologically mediated for blind and visually impaired visitors in museums

With the use of digital media, some museums are allowing visually impaired patrons having more inclusive available ways to understand and interact in exhibit context, contributing to better experiences during their visit to museums. In fact, “developments in technology have the potential to increase access and enable opportunities for disabled persons” [21, p. 26], besides the fact that offering the possibility to interact with touchable representations of

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exhibits can bring, as well, non-disabled visitors closer to museum collections, incrementing their sensorial experiences [22].

One of those technologies that museums are already using, are 3D printing and scanning, like at The Art Institute of Chicago, where blind and partially sighted visitors can touch three-dimensional replicas of selected objects from the collection, alongside with discussions about the original works of art being promoted by museum staff [23].

Another exhibition, the Hoy Toca el Prado, at the Prado Museum, carried out tactile reliefs of six famous works of art, which could be touched, in order to allow patrons with vision impairment to mentally recreate the paintings by feeling and understanding their depth, perspective and space [24].

Nevertheless, [25] agree that tactile perception should be supported by hearing information, since its multimodal combination help the formulation of mental images and leads to a more autonomous exploration of the physical world. However, the authors inform that technological examples of simultaneous union of both senses are quite rare in communication devices for the visually impaired, and in museums, this lack is substantial.

As an example, the digital model produced by scanning a 2500-year-old mummy of the Manchester Museum collection, was worked upon to recreate half of the sculpture as it would originally have appeared, and the other half as it is nowadays. Inside the replica, there were embedded touch sensitive sensors, that detect the tactile exploration made by visitors and trigger contextual audio-explanations that can be listened through headphones [26].

Another research project, Tooteko, developed for an exhibition at the Correr Museum, aimed to help visually disabled to independently sense church facades. By using augmented reality, during the tactile exploration of the piece visitors are wearing a ring sensor that detects and reads the NFC tags that were allocated inside the model, sending a Bluetooth signal to a smart device, responsible to identify the area and activate the audio related to it [25].

In its turn, other group of researchers [27] were developed a gesture-based interactive audio guide for the relief interpretation of the painting The Kiss, that accordingly to a specific region that is being touched, presents audio files to describe the painting. A similar project that comprises both hand-tracking system and an audio device was developed to give access to a bas-relief of the painting Madonna with Child and Angels [28].

A research project aimed at exploring how to integrate intellectual access to pieces of the collection with a way to assist visually impaired people during their navigation inside the Museum of Cycladic Art [29]. Visitors may use a smartphone to choose an exhibit that wish to know, and the app provides navigation instructions by taking advantage of passive infrared (PIR) motion sensors embedded in the room. When arriving to the object it is possible to touch it. The interaction is detected by five capacitive sensors, connected to a microcontroller that sends data to the smartphone, playing the audio files.

It is noted that the most part of discussed researches in this field aimed at replicate collection objects in order to be handled during the interaction, while this paper explores a solution designed to communicate original artefacts to blind and visually impaired visitors, avoiding the cost with constructing artefacts copies.

3. Interface development process and implementation

The following subsections will present the project history and methodology, the interaction design model, system architecture and software architecture developed, as well as the process of implementing the exhibitor.

3.1. Project history and methodology

The beginning of this project dates back to 2014 and a paper about the previous work was published [30], where the process of conceptualization and development of a high-fidelity prototype of a tangible user interface was presented, as well as data analysis regarding visitors’ evaluation concerning hedonic and pragmatic aspects of the interaction with the interface, together with how to enhance the physical and intellectual access to the collection.

Given the positive results gathered from a sample of 138 participants in the study (9 of whom were blind), and the enhanced experience of visit accomplished while using the prototype, an international research project was established between the Museum and the authors of the present paper, with the aim to re-design and develop a final version of the

Pedras Sabidas exhibitor, to permanently integrate the main Museum exhibition, taking into account the data collected

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With this, the subsequent steps are, in essence, iterations of the methodology of participatory design [31], followed since the beginning of the research: users are actively involved during the various stages of the investigation, during which they cooperate with the researchers, to iteratively construct and refine a solution [32].

3.2. Interaction design model, system architecture and software architecture

Given the positive pragmatic and hedonic results pointed out by visitors, specially by blind ones, during the evaluation phase of their interaction with the prototype, it was agreed to maintain the same interaction model, but expand it to five samples of the collection: when an exhibit if lifted, the interface provides sound and graphical information about it along with the handling, that smoothly stops when the sample is putted down. In addition, if users wish to explore in detail differences about two of the samples, they must handle, at the same time, two of the five exhibits, so a comparison by themes in common and individual characteristics are presented, while they can tactile explore both.

With the aim to give response to unexpected events, that [32] identify as essential to guarantee that users don’t get lost anytime and as contributors to a better interaction experience, the system alerts visitors by audio feedback each time more than two samples are handled, as well as informs them how to use the exhibitor and about the existence of the comparison mode.

Regarding the system architecture, it was necessary to re-design the whole scheme, as show in Fig. 1, as well as the physical structure of the exhibitor, in order to provide a more pleasant interaction with it and a cleaner interface from the aesthetic point of view.

At the “user interface” area, it was intended to focus the visitors’ attention only on the five exhibits that were attached to a steel cable – visible in Fig. 2 (c) – with a counterweight at the other end, each one. This solution, on one hand, allowed embedding the sensors on an area inaccessible to users, so it helps in its conservation and avoids damage due to misuse. On the other hand, it functions as a “constraint”, a design principle pointed out as essential [32], so it restricts per se the kind of user interaction that can take place while using the exhibitor. Additionally, it guarantees the safety of the original artefacts, avoiding dropping and consequent damage, as well as its theft.

The interaction is sensed by five force sensitive resistors, that are connected to analogic pins of a microcontroller board (Arduino Leonardo). This one connected via USB to a computer that receives the external data corresponding to user actions and analyses it. The multimedia contents are presented according the number of exhibits that are being handled as visual and sound information, respectively, by a display and speakers.

Given the target audience of this project, it was crucial taking into consideration the whole spectrum of visual impairments, what means that even though the decreased ability to see, some of the visitors still have some vision capacities. For this reason, close-up photos of the exhibits were taken by the geosciences team, in order to allow a detailed view of the most significative parts of the pieces, as well as their original colours, what could be difficult for some people to see while handling the exhibits. At the same time, it was important to guarantee that visually enabled visitors still have access to multimedia contents, so the previous evaluation considerations were followed to re-design

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